Star Cafe @ Taman Desa

‘This voucher had expired’ –that was the word from the waiter a few seconds after we handed him the printout from Groupon. ‘HUH?’ was my reaction, how can worr ? how can we have made reservation if the voucher had expired. The waiter returned the voucher to us and then we realised. Oh, clever me had handed him the House Frankfurt voucher which had expired last week.

After thinking about it- strange thing that the waiter didn’t point out the obvious- that it was a wrong voucher ? or maybe he didn’t think of the possibilities that some careless people might bring the wrong voucher. This kind of remind me of the joke where : A blonde had two horses, but she couldn’t tell them apart. So she asked her neighbor for advice. He suggested that she cut the tail off one of the horses. This worked until the other horse snagged his tail on a fence. So the neighbor suggested notching one of the horses’ ear. This worked until the other horse snagged his ear on a fence. So the neighbor suggested measuring the height of the horses. And sure enough, the white horse was two inches taller than the black horse. Anyway, lucky for us, it was not too difficult to produce the right voucher. The Groupon deal as below :

We decided to try both the soups- asparagus and oxtail soup. For mains- I ordered grilled salmon steak, while Chunny was torn between having the duck or the oxtail stew. The duck won the coin toss. We had 2 Ojs while waiting for our meal

The oxtail soup was a burst of flavours , rich and strong. Garnished with lots of deep fried onions. This was rather enjoyable. The asparagus soup which according to the description was supposed to be creamy , what arrived at our table was like a clear soup with a layer of congealed something floating at the top. The soup was watery and bland- what happened to ‘creamy’ ?

Duck a l’orange –roast duck in Curacao sauce which orange zest, served with potatoes and vegetables. I think at first we were expecting a bigger portion of the duck, but after tasting it, we were rather happy with it. I tried to eat only the lean part of the meat without the skin and the thin layer of fat but it just didn’t work as it was a bit chewy and slightly dry, but after eating the whole thing- meat, skin , fat and all- it worked great. This was nice.

Grilled salmon steak – served with spaghetti and garden salad. A tallish bowl filled with gravy came with the salmon and as there were no sauce on the spaghetti or the salmon- I wasn’t sure where the gravy should go to – salmon ? Spaghetti? I poured it over the pasta and didn’t really like the taste. I am not sure what type of gravy was this. The portion of the salmon was rather large but I find it a bit dry especially where I didn’t have any gravy over it. The Manager had been very tentative to the customers and he came by to ask about the salmon ( and the duck) and offered some other sauce to go with the salmon which I declined.

While we were enjoying our meal, there were a few people hanging around , setting up the stage- but they certainly took a long time – and after that we saw them having dinner too. The music was the light and easy oldies range , during our meal we heard songs from Neil Diamond, Lobo, Carole King etc …this was pleasant and the other diners seemed to be enjoying them too.

Our dessert –vanilla flavoured custard in rich caramel sauce . The whipped cream had somehow lost its shape on its way from the kitchen to our table. The ‘peak’ seemed to have gone through an avalanche. The custard was light and smooth. Ok lah..

After the waiter cleared the aftermath of our dessert , Chunny was feeling uncomfortable that we were still sitting around enjoying a chitchat and the music while there were no food on our table and decided to try another dessert banana fritters with ice cream. The banana was crispy on the outside and hot, this contradict but went very well with the ice cream . Sinful but yummy.Again, the whipped cream had somewhat turned runny- I wonder why it couldn’t keep it’s shape ? maybe the banana fritters were too hot and melted the cream ?

Overall, an enjoyable meal , nice ambience and the live band was pretty decent too.